Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Philadelphia Sports History/Phila Daily News

Some of us were having a discussion recently complaining about our various home towns' sports teams sad history.

Here's an article from the Phila Daily News on the sad tale of woe from Philadelphia--not that it is a competition or anything.

I especially related to the line about how we Philadelphians remember some of the losses as the most memorable moments in our lives.

the 1964 phils (a bit before my time).

The 1993 Phillies (mitch williams gave up winning HR to Joe Carter)

The Eagles loss to Tampa Bay in this year's NFC championship

The Eagles loss the year before in the NFC championship to St Louis--63 yards short!

etc etc

At least I had the wisdom to be a Villanova Student in 1985 when we beat Georgetown for the NCAA national basketball championship-one of the greatest cinderella stories--maybe THE GREATEST--in NCAA history.

Philadelphia Daily News / 06/02/2003 / Rich Hofmann / Who needs a parade?
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/5994418.htm

Posted on Mon, Jun. 02, 2003

Rich Hofmann / Who needs a parade?
PHILLY FANS WOULDN'T TRADE THEIR LOT IN LIFE
By Rich Hofmann
[e-mail]


George Reynolds / Daily News

Flyers' last cup was in 1975, but they're a perennial playoff team.


THE OCCASION passed quietly, without comment. On Saturday night, it was the 20th anniversary of the Sixers defeating the Lakers in the 1983 NBA Finals - the last time a major professional team in Philadelphia won a championship.

It is a staggering thing: 20 baseball seasons, 20 football seasons, 20 basketball seasons, 20 hockey seasons, 0 championships. Sometimes you believe it has become the all-consuming civic preoccupation. None of us is immune from it, not completely. We all lapse into it sometimes - the talk of jinxes and worse, of fatalism and dread, of Joe Carter and Ronde Barber and choking situations long past.

But is it all-consuming?

Is Philadelphia a sporting wasteland?

If you don't win it all, does that mean you lose?

Is that where we are as a city?

Questions on an anniversary.

Mr. Hoffman,

I write to you from a long way away, on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. As a lieutenant in the United States Army I walk up to this location on a daily basis to get my 15 minutes on the internet to shoot some emails back to my loved ones in the States and check the news. Philly.com is usually my first stop to see what is new on the homefront and see how the Sixers, Flyers, Phils and Birds are faring.

We asked those questions for a couple of days last week on philly.com. In an attempt to see exactly where everybody's head is after two decades of not winning it all, we posed a question. You had to pick the city in which you'd rather have been a sports fan in the last 10 years.

Would it be the city where your teams made it to the playoffs 20 times - as much as any other city in the country with four pro teams or fewer - but which never won a championship? Because that city is Philadelphia.

Or would you rather have lived in a city whose three teams made it to the playoffs only seven times in the same 10-year period - but where there was a single championship? Because that city is Tampa.

Are you so starved for a championship, so hungry, that you'd rather live in a place where the teams were good enough to be playoff teams only one-third as often - as long as you got to experience that single, shining moment?

Is that were you are?

Is that how bad it's been?

There is nothing like being from Philly. I serve as an Executive Officer in a Transportation Company. I have 125 soldiers under me. Three of them are fortunate enough to be from Philly. We are like family. We look out for each other, and are truly brothers. I print off box scores on a daily basis to update them on scores from home. Nothing starts off a day better than reading about a game from home, especially a win. We have over 10 people from the Tampa region in the Company and nothing like this occurs with them. Half of them barely made it to watch the Super Bowl they won. There is no passion there.

We were here in January and were fortunate enough to find a place to watch the Birds lose the NFC Championship game. I say fortunate because just being able to watch the game and feel closer to home was good enough for us. For those three hours I felt like I was back in the Vet, Section 360, Row 1 Seat 18 with my friends Mike and Tim, as I have been many times before. We rode the playoff roller coaster with the Sixers and Flyers, and sat around a computer, hitting the update button every thirty seconds in the middle of the night, just to see who the Eagles would draft. Now we look for Phillies scores daily. It just gives us something to reach out and touch home.

Admittedly, it was a stark choice. There were plenty of other places we could have chosen - places with a little less regular-season success than Philadelphia but with a championship. But those would be easy choices. This was meant to be a stern test of what everybody seems to think this town's mindset is, 20 years after.

How many times have you heard a friend say, "If we'd only win one, I don't care what happens." How many times have you said it? But saying it and meaning it are two different things. And in 2003, well, let's just say that it's a time in the media where meaning it isn't always all that high a priority anymore, a time where edginess is next to godliness.

So the question was posed this way to find out what you really think. While the results aren't scientific or anything, they do say something:

That 62 percent preferred the last decade in Philadelphia, and that 38 percent would have preferred one shining moment in Tampa.

There was passion both ways.

One guy wrote, "Lots of years in the playoffs is great for a while, but without a Title, it eventually leads to immense frustration. Most fans I know would accept five or seven lousy years if that were the cost of just one stinkin' "Number 1". And that's what the Philly franchises don't get."

Dave F. wrote, "Not only is a year without a team in the playoffs pathetic, it's boring. Give me my annual faint glimmer of hope, and I'll enjoy my annual dissecting of what went wrong. It's tradition."

Jeff C. said, "Come on, this question is a no-brainer! Anyone who prefers [20] playoff appearances and no titles to 7 appearances and 1 title is a fool, if not a masochist, and probably prefers chicken over steak."

And Scott L. replied, "We mark the painful losses such as last year's NFC Championship game (and) the Phillies' Black Friday '77 NLCS Game Three as some of the most memorable days of our lives. But I'd never trade that pain for not being there at all."

Back and forth it went, the clear majority willing to live with the last decade in Philadelphia rather than trade it for a single bolt of good fortune.

And there was this one letter.

Our days overseas are numbered. I have been here over 5 months and hope to return to my home station at Fort Eustis, Virginia soon. I am already making plans to get back to the Vet to see a Phils game before they tear it down. I will be sitting somewhere with a beer and a tear when they tear that place down. It will always be a part of my childhood. I ask you who in Tampa has feelings and emotions like that. It stinks that we haven't won a Championship since I was 5, but it just adds to the bond that makes Philadelphia and its fans special, the passion and appreciation for a hard worker.

I'll take Philly in a second, even if we never win a Championship. It's about the attitude, the work-ethic and the people. I have had two visions in my head on a daily basis since I left the US. The first is seeing my family and girlfriend again when I get off that plane back in Virginia. There is nothing that will ever compare to that feeling. The second is Monday, September 8th, 9 pm at Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, PA. Philly vs. Tampa, there is nowhere else I would rather be. I can't even begin to imagine what it is going to cost me to get a seat for me and my dad in that place that night, but we will be there. That is when I will be home and all will be back to normal for me. I ask you again, find me anyone in Tampa who has passion like that.

The soldier signed the e-mail and posted it from Camp Cedar, Iraq; his name isn't included here because we didn't get an e-mail back in time with permission from him to use it.

It really makes you think, though. And after 20 years of living this lack of a championship and analyzing this whole civic psychology that has resulted, of being around it every day, we've all said plenty.

But whoever would have believed that the clearest perspective of all would come from half a world away?


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